To Win or to Die Part 18

No one spoke in reply, but their companion's cheery way of meeting the perils ahead sent a thrill of confidence through the party, as they stood on the triangular raft, noting that the current was gradually growing swifter as the rocky walls on either side closed in from being hundreds of yards apart to as many feet, and the distance lessening rapidly more and more.

It was horrible, but grand, and as the pace increased, a curious sensation of intoxicating excitement attacked the party, whose senses seemed to be quickened so that they could note the wondrous colours of the rocks, the vivid green of the ferns and herbs which cl.u.s.tered in the rifts and cracks, and the glorious clearness of the water.

So excited was the great fellow at the head of the raft that he raised his pole, turned to look at his companions, and then pointed onward, while moment by moment the great walls of rock seemed to close in upon them as if to crush all flat.

Up to now their progress had been a swift glide, but as they approached the narrow opening, which seemed not much more than wide enough to let them pa.s.s, the raft began to undulate and proceed by leaps, each longer than the last, while the water rippled over the side.

Then all at once the front portion--the apex of the elongated triangle-- rose as if at a leap, dipped again, and they were off with a terrific rush in a narrow channel of rock, up whose sides the water rose as if to escape the turmoil. Wave rose above wave, struggling to get onward; there was the roar of many waters growing more deafening, and the raft was tossed about like a straw, its occupants being forced to kneel and try to fend her off from the sides. And now, to add to the horror, turmoil, and confusion, they plunged at a tremendous speed into a bank of churned up mist, dense as the darkest cloud, rus.h.i.+ng onward in bounds and leaps which made the raft quiver, till all at once Dallas, who was near their captain, suddenly caught sight of a ma.s.s of rocks apparently rising out of the channel right in their way.

The next moment there was a terrific shock, a rush of water, black darkness, and everything seemed to be at an end.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

"THOSE BORN TO BE HANGED."

The preparations for fending the raft off the rocks that might be in their way, or keeping it from the wall-like sides which overhung them, were absurd; for as they were swept into the furious rapid, and whirled and tossed about, each man instinctively dropped his pole to crouch down and cling for dear life to the rough pieces of timber they had so laboriously notched, nailed, and bound together.

The course of the river was extremely erratic, zigzagging through the riven, rocky barrier which formed the ancient dam at the foot of the lake; and one minute they were swept to right, the next to left, while at every angle there was a whirlpool which threatened to suck them down.

Noise, darkness, the wild turmoil of tumbling waters, blinding mist, and choking spray, strangled and confused the little crew, so that they clung to the raft, feeling that all was over, and that they were about to be plunged deep down into the bowels of the earth. Dallas was conscious of wedging his toes between two of the timbers, clinging with his left hand, and reaching over the bound-down sledges to grasp Abel's; and then all seemed to be blank for a length of time that he could not calculate. It might have been a minute--it might have been an hour; but he held on to his cousin's hand, which clutched his in return in what seemed to be a death-grip, till all at once they were shot out into the bright suns.h.i.+ne, and were gliding at a tremendous rate down a water-slide, with the water hissing and surging about them where they knelt.

As soon as he could sweep the blinding spray from his eyes, Dallas looked round in wonder, to find that all his companions were upon the raft, and that the rocky walls on either side were receding fast as the river opened out, while the rapid down which they plunged seemed quite clear of rocks.

The deafening noise was dying out too, and as Dallas looked back at the fast growing distant gap in the rock through which they had been shot, he wondered that the raft should have held together with its freight, and that they should still be there.

His brain seemed still to be buzzing with the confusion, when he was conscious of some one beside him giving himself a shake like a great water-dog and shouting:

"What cheer, there! Not dead yet. Are any of you?"

There was no reply--every one looking strained and oppressed; then, without a word, the little party began to shake hands warmly, and the big Cornishman shook his head.

"It was a rum un!" he exclaimed; "it was a rum un! Well, we're all alive O, and if we do get any gold, you may all do as you like, but I shall go back home some other way."

The straightforward naive way in which this was said seemed so absurd on the face of it that the cousins could not refrain from smiling: but the sight of a great ma.s.s of rock ahead dividing the swift stream into two, and toward which the raft seemed to be rus.h.i.+ng fast, made all turn to seize their poles and fend it off from a certainty of wreck.

However, the poles were all probably being whirled round and round one of the pools they had pa.s.sed, like sc.r.a.ps of straw, and the shattering of the raft seemed a certainty; but their big companion was a man of resource. Seating himself upon the edge of the raft as it glided evenly along, he waited with legs extended for the coming contact. His feet touched the rock, and a vigorous thrust eased their craft off, the brave fellow's st.u.r.dy limbs acting like strong buffers, so that there was only a violent jerk, the raft swung round, and they went gliding on again.

The current was swift, but clear now from further obstacles, and hope grew strong.

"I say, I call it grand!" cried one of the men. "We shall soon get there if we keep on like this."

"Yes, but the sooner one of us takes a rope and jumps ash.o.r.e, the better. We must cut some fresh poles."

This was done at the first opportunity, Abel leaping on to the rocky bank with a rope, as they glided by a spot where the forest of pines came down close to them; and then, seizing his opportunity, he gave the rope a turn round a small tree. There was a jerk, and the hemp threatened to part; but it held, and the raft swung round and became stationary as the rope was made fast.

The first proceeding was to wring out their garments, and the next to examine the sledges, which had been so well made fast when loaded up that they had not stirred; but some of the stores were damaged with water.

"Can't help it," said Dallas cheerily. "Our lives are saved."

Something was done towards their drying by the warm suns.h.i.+ne, for this came down brightly, though the aspect round was growing almost as wintry as the country they had pa.s.sed through higher up beyond the lake; and as they gazed at the mountains, which they felt must lie somewhere near the part for which they were aiming, it seemed as if they would, after all, be arriving too soon for successful work.

The raft proved useful for some days on their way north by river and lake, their journey being through a labyrinth of waterways, where again and again they made halts in likely places to try for the object of their search.

But the result was invariably the same; they found gold, but never in sufficient quant.i.ty to warrant a stay.

"Wouldn't pay for bread and onions, my sons," said the Cornishman, and they pushed on farther and farther into the northern solitudes, with their loads growing lighter, and a feeling of longing to reach the golden land where they knew something in the way of settlements and stores existed, and where people could at once take up claims and begin work. For a comparison of notes proved that they were all rapidly coming to the end of their means.

The subject of the pa.s.sage of the raft down the cataract had been several times over discussed during their halts, and the possibility of their enemies having escaped. The Cornishman and his companions, including the man they had succoured, declared as one that the marauding trio must have perished.

"And so should we, my sons," said the big fellow, "if we had gone down that water-slide on the first raft."

"I do not see it," said Dallas; "we made both."

"Yes; but the first was when we were 'prentices, the second was when we had served our time."

The speaker laughed as he said this; and as it happened, it was on the second day after that he pointed with something like triumph to some newly cut and trimmed young pieces of pine-trunk notched in a peculiar way, cast up among some rocks on the sh.o.r.es of the little lake they were crossing.

"That's the end of 'em, my sons," he said.

"Oh, no; any one may have cut down those trees."

"For sartain, my son; but I nailed 'em together, for there's one of my spikes still sticking in. Good nail, too; see how it's twisted and bent."

This seemed unanswerable, but neither Abel nor Dallas was convinced.

"They may have swum ash.o.r.e," Abel said to his cousin, as they lay down to sleep that night.

"Yes," said Dallas, "and I shall hold to Bob's proverb about those born to be hanged."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

A PLUNGE INTO HOT QUARTERS.

"So this is the golden city," said Dallas, as he and Abel sat, worn out and disconsolate, gazing at a confusion of tents, sheds, and shanties, for it could be called nothing else, on the hither side of a tumbled together waste of snow and ice spreading to right and left. "Is it all a swindle or a dream?"

"I hope it's a dream," replied his cousin, limping a step or two, and then seating himself on the sledge which, footsore and weary, he had been dragging for the last few days after they had finally abandoned their raft. "I hope it's a dream, and that we shall soon wake."

The big Cornishman took his short pipe out of his mouth, blew a big cloud, looked at his companions, who were asleep rolled up in their blankets, and then at the cousins.

"Oh, we're wide awake enough, my sons," he said, "and we've got here at last."

"Yes," said Dallas bitterly; "we've got here, and what next?"

"Make our piles, as the Yankees call it, my lads."